Gabi Schaffner works as an interdisciplinary traveling artist and curator within the fields of sound art, composition and visionary documentation. Central to her activities are communication, non-hierarchic perspectives and sharing.
Distance and locality are not just about geography. They define relations within cultures on multiple levels. They may vary or move, they may travel or change by travelling. Much of her art is dedicated to the twin star system of (cultural) distance and difference and its pitfalls.

In 2012 she founded Datscha Radio (with reboot.fm/Berlin), a temporary mobile radio station that focuses on the realms of gardening and ecology. Ethnographic fieldwork is combined with poetics, community work, sound art and transmission.
Since 2015, her artistic practice has expanded to include combinations of micro-radio installation, storytelling and improvised shows. Almost all works are geographically anchored and make use of the local sounds and voices.

Current work
“Sneeze Fantasies”. Ground-breaking compositions in New (Pandemic) Music by the Italian composer Maurizia “Farfalla” Pucci. Commissioned by Deutschlandradio. November 2017.
“Electric Fairy Grounds”, a three-part radio “Dreaming” for Bogong Village, Mt. Beauty, Australia. On-site installation and radio play. April 2017
“Datscha Radio”. The radio station in a Berlin garden will get reactivated and broadcast 24/7 in early September 2017.

Handkerchief For An Eternity. New Pandemic Music and the Life of Mauricia/o "Farfalle" Pucci

Quite a different "walk on the wild side" offers this documentary about the Italian new music composer Mauricio Pucci. Born in 1890 as a girl in a Tuscan village, she ran away and decided to take on the identity of a man. Fate sees her falling in love with New York composer Charles Griffe who later died of influenza. Back in Naples, Pucci founded the world’s first „Sneeze orchestra“ but found a comparatively early end in 1926.

The only surviving set of (longer) compositions, titled „Fazzoletto per un’eternita“ will be broadcast with in the frame of an Ars Acustica Project on EBU Concert Season Anniversary in November 2017.

A set of (very much shorter) pieces is available as part of deutschland radio’s „wurfsendungen“ under the title „Sneeze Fantasies“.

„Sneeze Fantasies“ and „Fazzoletto per un’eternita“ form both part of a new biography and music project by Gabi Schaffner aka Sisukas Poronainen.

Song for Gretchentag:www.schaffnerin.net,2017:/?/radio/project-gretchen/2017-06-14T00:55:34+10:00@page_description

Song for Gretchen (Lied für Gretchen)
Stereo installation for 2 birdhouses and speakers

16th of April found Faust’s poor Gretchen singing in the garden of the Willemer Häuschen in Frankfurt/Main: On occasion of Easter and Goethe’s famous “Easter Walk” poem, the curators Annette Gloser and Robert Bock invited 11 artists to create art works along a historical parcours passing by Frankfurt’s Goethian landmarks. In an adaption of an old German “kitchen song” the voices of Shanti Suki Osman and Ulrike Stoehring rang out from two birdboxes, each housing a different mono track for stereo listening.

I am this radiotag:www.schaffnerin.net,2017:/?/radio/project-radio/2017-06-14T00:44:52+10:00@page_description

People imagine many things. Ever thought how it is to be a radio? This one tells you how she feels (it’s a female one). “I am this Radio” invites you into a relationship that is half spoken half dreamt. Between the words and waves there is a veil: a veil of noise. “Imagine it like a curtain, in a house in the country” or don’t imagine anything and hear the sounds around you.
Listen on soundcloud: here. .

Radio piece with nightingale poems. 2016. 11 min.Composed for a Dinah Bird and Jean Phillip Renoult radio broadcast in a Paris urban garden. Also featured at Radiorevolten, Halle, 2016

Mr. Hatter is raking the lawn in his garden while a nightingale sings along. He seemingly suffers of tinnitus, but then again it is not altogether clear where we are: Inside Matt’s head? In a parallel mix-tape world where Keat’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is intercut with more nightingale poems in other languages? Mr. Hatter doesn’t give a damn… he rummages about, his mind spinning with occasional tango tunes and drippings from watering cans.

Australian Beautiestag:www.schaffnerin.net,2017:/?/mapping/project_beauties/2017-06-14T01:07:57+10:00@page_description

Australian Beauties refers to the work of German botanists travelling Australia since the 50s of the 19th century. Namely the work of Ferdinand von Mueller was vital for the botanic culture of Australia: Not only did he discover a great number of plants and became the renowned director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens in 1857. Even before that he started on the most extensive collection of pressed plants in Australia for a herbarium that still forms the core of the present “plant library” of the Botanic Gardens.

b>Australian Beauties is a “roadside herbarium” currently featuring 23 pressed plants from Australia, provided with reinvented names, but real situational descriptions and observations on the nature of the specific plant. The work draws on the spirit of discovery which forms such a great part of Western culture – and defies it at the same time in counteracting the “laws” of taxonomy, scientific soberness and order. The grit of the road still sticks to the pressed specimens. Australian Beauties hovers on the brink between the factual and the imaginary and between irony and wonder.

Installation for 3 transmitters and a radio play in 3 chapters
In November 2015 I started first interviews
with former inhabitants of Bogong Village,
among them Anita Martin who spent almost
her entire childhood there. Further
conversation partners were a former engineer
as well as the current landscape
gardener.
Together with the pupils of the Mt. Beauty
Secondary School I will record a radio
play that loosely relates to the memories
of the then 10-year old Anita.
Old and new recordings are collaged
on-site and combined into a story in three
chapters. Each chapter is linked to a specific
location (see map) sind. Total length
of the story scape: 18-25 Minutes.
In collaboration with Radio Alpine the
piece will also be broadcast on 92.5 FM.
Installation for three Transmitters
Camouflaged as bird houses three transmitter
stations will be set up in Bogong.
Reach will be 6-10 meters at least, but
not more than 25. The broadcast is stored
either on an MP3 player or on an SD
card. The work can be listened to via mobile
radios or smart phones (with FMreceivers).
Three possible locations are Junction
Dam, the old tennis court and the uncanny
tree on the other lake side. Analogue
to the ancient concept of the Dreaming,
the multiple identities of Bogong
become only accessable through taking a
walk that bridges past and

Hidden Places What comes to your mind if you think of a hidden place? A place you found for yourself alone in the wilderness of nature? How does it look like and what happened there? What sounds were there, what colours?
“Hidden Places” is a cluster of 18 compositions centred on the idea of landscape descriptions from Iceland and Australia.

The concept of landscape is manmade, and it is predominantly Western culture that defines our notion of nature. In a very free form poetic quest “Hidden Places” examines the ways how this is done and it does so by asking people for their stories. My choice of interviewees was accidental: people I travelled or lived with, friends of friends appearing at the table, neighbours and visitors interested in my research.

Other sitestag:www.schaffnerin.net,2017:/?/audio/2017-06-17T07:30:13+10:00@page_description

“raw audio” draws on the aural qualities and possibilities of site-specific work. Concept albums form another important line in my work. Centered around a single poetic idea, they evolve as hybrids between music, fiction and ethnographic writing.

2014: Radio meets Ethnography ! For 100 days, Datscharadio will investigate German garden culture at the national garden show in Gießen, Hessia. Together with artists, guests and gardeners and an experimental audio compost station.

2012: A radio station is set up in a Berlin private garden to create a full week of streaming radio. In collaboration with artists, guests, chefs and - of course - a worldwide listening public.

Phoenomena of Inner Topographies explores the realms of real and fictional landscapes by means of essays, quotes, lost and found imagery, maps and contributions of supporting artists.The entries are ordered alphabetically. Include 4 plates of Mongolian ant heaps.

Dada de Nadatag:www.schaffnerin.net,2017:/?/archive/archive-dada-8/2015-10-20T02:33:49+11:00@page_description

International platform for experimental literature, film and music. Hosted by three individuals. 2004-2007.

Stories of the Top of my Headtag:www.schaffnerin.net,2017:/?/archive/archive-stories-9/2015-10-21T00:09:01+11:00@page_description

Worked as a travelling storyteller (mainly between 2000 and 2008). Stories ranged from odd fairy tales and myths (Finland, Mongolia, Inuit) and science fiction (Lovecraft, Ballard) to classical literature (Gogol, Mishima) and Japanese Movies. If i feel like it, I do so again.